Deadly Brush Fires Cost Connecticut Millions to Fight

(TNS) — It started with a campfire.

Some time before the afternoon of Oct. 21, a hiker or camper tried to tamp out a fire they’d made on the cliffs overlooking Sea Green Drive in Berlin. The steep ridge line is part of the “hanging hills” of central Connecticut that rise slowly on one side before dropping off a high, rocky cliff.

Officials said the person who started the fire didn’t appear to have been malicious, but somehow a bit of hot ash or a coal escaped their attention.

The remnants of the campfire quickly spread, the ground so dried out by weeks of sun and wind that the very topsoil was at risk of burning.

Berlin firefighters were alerted to the spreading wildfire that evening by nearby residents. Photos taken from a nearby boat launch showed orange flames burning below the tree canopy, illuminating the side of the mountain against a night sky.

It took crews from around the country and Canada weeks of effort before officials finally declared the blaze mostly contained, after it spread to more than 120 acres. Because of the treacherous terrain, officials brought in helicopters from Maine and the Connecticut National Guard to dump more than 100,000 gallons of water on the fire.

It was the first time in almost 30 years that National Guard air crews were tasked with fighting wildfires in Connecticut, the Army said.

But after a bone-dry autumn across the region, the conflagration on Lamentation Mountain may have been less an aberration than a natural outcome.

“Staff would always tell me that, ‘Oh, it’s only a matter of time. It’s going to happen. It’s going to happen.’ And I would, you know, maybe curmudgeonly or what have you just kind of push it off and say, ‘No, Connecticut doesn’t burn like that,'” said Chris Martin, director and state forester for the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection’s Division of Forestry. “I have had to humbly reset my expectations.”

Two years ago, crews battled a large brush fire that erupted during the spring in Middletown. For the first time “probably since the early 1900s,” the state had to call upon mutual aid assistance from Rhode Island to fight that fire, Martin said.

Typically, Connecticut’s predominantly hardwood forests are not as fire-prone as forests out West or in the southeast, which feature more evergreens with highly flammable sap and needles, Martin said.

Since Oct. 21, Connecticut has seen more than 175 “fire starts,” Martin said last week. With the exception of the fire on Lamentation Mountain, most were between 1 and 5 acres in size, he said.

“It’s a combination of the fuel loading from falling leaves and then the historic dry weather we’ve had has changed what normally is a very quiet area of the country regarding fire to very busy area,” he said.

Battling the fire in Berlin alone has racked up a bill estimated to be between $1 million and $5 million, according to Martin. Just the cost of having a 20-person crew from out of state can reach around $20,000 per day, he said.

“We are tracking staff time. We are tracking equipment. We’re tracking fuel and other necessary items to combat the fires,” Martin said. “So, the support was tremendous from the Air National Guard and the Army ground troops we had. But they’re not volunteers. We’ll be paying for them.”

The state was approved for a Fire Management Assistance grant through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, in which 75 percent of the cost will be picked up by federal dollars and the remaining quarter through state and local resources.

Brush fires a regional problem

The dry autumn of 2024 is affecting more than just Connecticut. Southeastern New York and northwestern New Jersey are also under threat from brush fires, Martin said. Red flag warnings, issued by the National Weather Service on days when wildfire risk is particularly high, at times this season have extended across Massachusetts and into southern Vermont and New Hampshire.

Fires even have extended into Manhattan, where a brush fire erupted in Inwood Hill Park on the northern tip of the island Wednesday, the New York Times reported. In New Jersey, Gov. Phil Murphy issued a drought declaration and asked residents to reduce water use. Police in Philadelphia and Long Island have charged two people, one of them a firefighter, with purposely setting fires in separate incidents amid the drought, The Associated Press reported.

New York City officials over the weekend also announced the creation of a brush fire task force. The unit, which will include drone units, fire marshals and fire protection inspectors, will focus on quickly responding to brush fires and investigating their cause, Gothamist reported.

Some of the fires have been fatal, including the one on Lamentation Mountain — dubbed the Hawthorne Fire by officials because of its location near Hawthorne Drive. Soon after the fire erupted, officials said Wethersfield volunteer firefighter Robert Sharkevich Sr. was killed when a utility vehicle rolled over on him, also injuring several other firefighters involved.

The difficult terrain may have contributed to the accident.

The “hanging hills,” as they’re known, are characterized by a gradual incline on one side, and then a steep drop with boulders on the other end, Martin said.

“It proved fatal, frankly (for) the firefighters trying to battle that fire, it’s treacherous, treacherous ground,” he said. “The only safe way to approach that and protect the nearby residents was aerial water drops.”

In New York, an 18-year-old state parks employee was killed after a tree fell on him while battling a fire in the Sterling Forest near the New Jersey border.

Historic drought

As of Thursday, most of Connecticut was in a “moderate drought,” according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. However, the most westward part of Fairfield County, the northwestern part of Hartford County and most of Litchfield County were in a “severe drought.” Last week, the entire state was under a “moderate drought.”

Typically, autumn is New England’s wetter season, said Matt Wunsch, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s New York office.

The dry weather is one of a few factors contributing to the threat of fires.

“It is very atypically dry,” Wunsch said.

This October was the driest on record and the area is down between 7 and 9 inches of rain from what it normally sees, the weather service said.

Weather service records show Bridgeport received 0.16 inch of rain in October, lower than the previous record of 0.32 inch of rainfall set in 2013.

“It’s very historic to see virtually no precipitation for the entire month of October,” Wunsch said.

Martin noted that crews had to battle a “stubborn” brush fire in Naugatuck State Forest that took several days to get to the point where it could be monitored — checked once or twice a day to see whether the fire had flared up again. That same area was within the footprint of heavy rains in August that brought deadly flooding to Connecticut, he said.

When conditions are this dry, even the organic top layers of the soil itself can burn in what’s known as ground fire, Martin said, and can even change the lay of the land.

“You’ll lose like a foot of elevation in the woods, because all that organic peat just smolders and burns away,” he said. To contain the fire to a certain area, wildland firefighters dig a fire line by getting rid of the light fuels like twigs and dead leaves — often with leaf blowers — then scrape the soil down to sand and gravel subsoil that won’t burn, he said.

Even the little bit of rain the region has seen in November hasn’t made much of a difference. So far in November, Bridgeport has seen only 0.21 inch of rain, or less than a quarter-inch, according to weather service records.

When a drought occurs, the soil loses moisture. As hundreds of thousands of multicolored leaves fall from New England trees, they’re not bringing much moisture with them, meaning they’re perfect fuel for a brush fire, Wunsch said.

Wind also is a threat when it comes to fires: This time of year, more cold fronts are coming through the region, and if they come without moisture, they’re bringing strong winds.

So, the combination of Connecticut’s dry soil moisture, the low moisture content in the air and the wind speeds have created the perfect conditions to exacerbate the tiniest spark into a growing fire, Wunsch said.

And the drought may persist for a while longer. Even if Connecticut gets a storm that brings some rain, it still would struggle to saturate the air, Wunsch said.

“It wouldn’t get us out of the current drought deficit that we’re in,” he said. “It would take a shift in the weather pattern and then multiple storm tracks to bring us back to where we should be.”

Realistically, Connecticut could be dealing with the drought through the end of the month, Wunsch said. The good news is that winter tends to be more active in terms of weather systems, and those typically are more rich in moisture.

Other factors causing brush fires

Berlin officials confirmed the Lamentation Mountain fire was started by the remnants of a campfire.

“They found a campfire at the top of the cliffs behind the Sea Green Drive area,” Berlin Fire Chief Jonn Massirio said. “It looks like it was not malicious by any means. It looks like somebody was just up there, camping or hiking, had a fire, they attempted to put it out, and it looks like maybe a hot ash got out of there that they didn’t catch. And that’s most likely what started the spread of the fire.”

Martin said there were around 95 municipal burn bans in effect across the state. DEEP also has instituted a burn ban at its state parks, state forests and wildlife management areas.

“Creating any sort of fire outdoors is just not a good idea, especially now with the drought conditions,” Wunsch said.

People who smoke also should be mindful to not throw cigarette butts from the window of the car while on the road.

“It’s a small thing that people might not think of, but it can cause very, very big problems.” Wunsch said.

© 2024 The News-Times (Danbury, Conn.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.